Then Uncle Al said quietly: “Sure I get it. And I got something for you, I think. Maybe you can make your own Fourth.”
“My own Fourth? What do you mean?”
“Come on out to my car, Marty. I've got something… well, I'll show you.” And he was striding away along the concrete path that circled the house before Marty could ask him what he meant.
His wheelchair hummed along the path to the driveway, away from the sounds of the pool-splashes, laughing screams, the kathummmm of the diving board. Away from his father's booming Big Pal voice. The sound of his wheelchair was a low, steady hum that Marty barely heard-all his life that sound, and the clank of his braces, had been the music of his movement.
Uncle Al's car was a low-slung Mercedes convertible. Marty knew his parents disapproved of it (“Twenty-eight-thousand-dollar deathtrap,” his mother had once called it with a brusque little sniff), but Marty loved it. Once Uncle Al had taken him for a ride on some of the back roads that crisscrossed Tarker's Mills, and he had driven fast-seventy, maybe eighty. He wouldn't tell Marty how fast they were going. “If you don't know, you won't be scared,” he had said. But Marty hadn't been scared. His belly had been sore the next day from laughing.
Uncle Al took something out of the glove-compartment of his car, and as Marty rolled up and stopped, he put a bulky cellophane package on the boy's withered thighs. “Here you go, kid,” he said. “Happy Fourth of July.”
The first thing Marty saw were exotic Chinese markings on the package's label. Then he saw what was inside, and his heart seemed to squeeze up in his chest. The cellophane package was full of fireworks.
“The ones that look like pyramids are Twizzers,” Uncle Al said.
Marty, absolutely stunned with joy, moved his lips to speak, but nothing came out.
“Light the fuses, set them down, and they spray as many colors as there are on a dragon's breath. The tubes with the thin sticks coming out of them are bottle-rockets. Put them in an empty Coke bottle and up they go. The little ones are fountains. There are two Roman candles… and of course, a package of firecrackers. But you better set those off tomorrow.”
Uncle Al cast an eye toward the noises coming from the pool.
“Thank you!” Marty was finally able to gasp. “Thank you, Uncle Al!”
“Just keep mum about where you got them,” Uncle Al said. “A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse, right?”
“Right, right,” Marty babbled, although he had no idea what nods, winks, and blind horses had to do with fireworks. “But are you sure you don't want them, Uncle Al?”
“I can get more,” Uncle Al said. “I know a guy over in Bridgton. He'll be doing business until it gets dark.” He put a hand on Marty's head. “You keep your Fourth after everyone else goes to bed. Don't shoot off any of the noisy ones and wake them all up. And for Christ's sake don't blow your hand off, or my big sis will never speak to me again.”
Then Uncle Al laughed and climbed into his car and roared the engine into life. He raised his hand in a half-salute to Marty and then was gone while Marty was still trying to stutter his thanks. He sat there for a moment looking after his uncle, swallowing hard to keep from crying. Then he put the packet of fireworks into his shirt and buzzed back to the house and his room. In his mind he was already waiting for night to come and everyone to be asleep.
He is the first one in bed that night. His mother comes in and kisses him goodnight (brusquely, not looking at his sticklike legs under the sheet). “You okay, Marty?”
“Yes, mom.”
She pauses, as if to say something more, and then gives her head a little shake. She leaves.
His sister Kate comes in. She doesn't kiss him; merely leans her head close to his neck so he can smell the chlorine in her hair and she whispers: “See? you don't always get what you want just because you're a cripple.”
“You might be surprised what I get,” he says softly, and she regards him for a moment with narrow suspicion before going out.
His father comes in last and sits on the side of Marty's bed. He speaks in his booming Big Pal voice. “Everything okay, big guy? You're off to bed early. Real early.”
“Just feeling a little tired, daddy.”
“Okay.” He slaps one of Marty's wasted legs with his big hand, winces unconsciously, and then gets up in a hurry. “Sorry about the fireworks, but just wait till next year! Hey, hey! Rootie-patootie!”
Marty smiles a small, secret smile.
So then he begins the waiting for the rest of the house to go to bed. It takes a long time. The TV runs on and on in the living room, the canned laughtracks often augmented by Katie's shrill giggles. The toilet in Granpa's bedroom goes with a bang and a flush. His mother chats on the phone, wishes someone a happy Fourth, says yes, it was a shame the fireworks show had been cancelled, but she thought that, under the circumstances, everyone understood why it had to be. Yes, Marty had been disappointed. Once, near the end of her conversation, she laughs, and when she laughs, she doesn't sound a bit brusque. She hardly ever laughs around Marty.
Every now and then, as seven-thirty became eight and nine, his hand creeps under his pillow to make sure the cellophane bag of fireworks is still there. Around nine-thirty, when the moon gets high enough to peer into his window and flood his room with silvery light, the house finally begins to wind down.
The TV clicks off. Katie goes to bed, protesting that all her friends got to stay up late in the summer. After she's gone, Marty's folks sit in the parlor awhile longer, their conversation only murmurs. And…
…and maybe he slept, because when he next touches the wonderful bag of fireworks, he realizes that the house is totally still and the moon has become even brighter-bright enough to cast shadows. He takes the bag out along with the book of matches he found earlier. He tucks his pajama shirt into his pajama pants; drops both the bag and the matches into his shirt, and prepares to get out of bed.
This is an operation for Marty, but not a painful one, as people sometimes seemed to think. There is no feeling of any kind in his legs, so there can be no pain. He grips the headboard of the bed, pulls himself up to a sitting position, and then shifts his legs over the edge of the bed one by one. He does this onehanded, using his other hand to hold the rail which begins at his bed and runs all the way around the room. Once he had tried moving his legs with both hands and somersaulted helplessly head over heels onto the floor. The crash brought everyone running. “You stupid show-off!” Kate had whispered fiercely into his ear after he had been helped into his chair, a little shaken up but laughing crazily in spite of the swelling on one temple and his split lip. “You want to kill yourself? Huh?” And then she had run out of the room, crying.
Once he's sitting on the edge of the bed, he wipes his hands on the front of his shirt to make sure they're dry and won't slip. Then he uses the rail to go hand over hand to his wheelchair. His useless scarecrow legs, so much dead weight, drag along behind him. The moonlight is bright enough to cast his shadow, bright and crisp, on the floor ahead of him.